Blog Tour Review and Extract : Silencing Anna by Sadie Mitchell

Anna Bright is in hospital,in a coma after being found bairly alive in a hotel bathroom. Anna is trapped inside her own body,she can't move,she can't see or speak. She can hear the nurses chattering and her family and friends when they come to visit. As Anna desperately tries to communicate with the outside world,someone is watching her,someone who would prefer it if Anna was silent....permanently.

Words can have many definitions as can relationships. This is the story of two different variations of prisons and two completely differing relationships. As Anna lies in her coma,she takes us back through her life and her relationships with kind loving Dylan and manipulative,abusive James. I have never been able to understand how abusers keep their true character hidden for months and even years until they start living with their victim or they get married. Then it's like an invisible switch is flicked and the abusers true personality and attitude does a complete 160% turn,from.kind and loving,to violent and abusive and then back to kind and living and very very sorry. But like in this story,it's always the victims fault,the abuser hasn't done anything wrong. Their not the one with the problem,the victim is the one who is the problem. Anna tried to tell James`s mum June what her son was like but June was just as bad as her son. A fact that made the situation even more confusing for Anna and caused her to doubt herself and wonder if maybe it was her fault that James treated her so badly. Even though she had had a perfectly normal,loving relationship with Dylan. The descriptions of James`s abuse,belittling and manipulations of Anna were shocking and realistic and very hard to read at times. But if I'm honest,after a while began to become a bit repetitive. Yes,I know the cycle of abuse is repetitive and I know that sadly for many people James`s behaviour is their everyday reality. That was just how I personally felt as the story unfolded. My favourite parts of the story were the parts about Anna being a prisoner inside her own body where all she could do all day is lie on her bed and think. I loved the vivid descriptions of her nightmares,the wide range of emotions she experienced as each day passed,the voices that may or may not have been inside her head. How I felt about Anna constantly changed as the story unfolded,she wasn't very likeable at times but she did have some redeemable qualities to her character.

It's a well written debut domestic drama/ thriller,the writers words flow with ease and the storylines in each time frame were easy to follow. It's hard to read at times due to the subject matter and would raise some interesting discussions if it was read by a book group.

                                          AN INTROSPECTIVE RETROSPECT

It’s important to take stock of your life.  How often do any of us actually stop, look around and really appreciate that which surrounds us? Not often enough. Imagine that all you know, your life, your experiences and your independence were about to be taken from you.  Imagine that tomorrow your world will be gone. It’s difficult to do, but please try.  It’s important to realise what it is that we have because life is so fragile and we never know what is just around the corner.
My name is Anna Bright, and I am telling you this story from my prison cell.  It’s not the normal kind of prison cell, and I have committed no crime. There are no walls in my prison, and there is no secured door, for I am locked away inside my own body.  My thoughts, feelings and senses, they are all as they were, and the connection from outside to inside is working as well as it ever did, but the connection from inside to outside is broken.  I can’t move, smile or talk; my face remains inert and expressionless, unable to convey my emotions.  A machine is keeping me alive by breathing for me; the tube into my windpipe feels uncomfortable and intrusive.  I want to take a deep breath and sigh or yawn; I want to shout and tell others I can hear them, but no matter how hard I try, no matter what effort I make, nothing changes and no one notices.
Allow me to tell you how I ended up here.  Quite simply, I slipped.  I stepped on a wet floor in the bathroom of a hotel room, and I slipped and banged my head on the bidet.  A bidet of all things!  I suppose it is marginally better than a toilet, or maybe it isn’t?  I don’t know if people even use them.  I knocked myself out on a superfluous piece of bathroom furniture. Isn’t that the most unexciting way to destroy the intricacies of my brain? I think so, but it is okay because the world outside my prison has been making up a far more exciting story to replace the wet floor/superfluous bathroom furniture one.  The world outside my prison believes that I am the victim of a murder attempt, and according to the world, the would-be murderer is my boyfriend of eighteen months, James Green.  I can’t tell them this is not so, and it was simply an accident because I am locked in my prison, so I have to listen while the world makes up events that didn’t actually happen.  Oh, and James is probably going to prison and for a long time too.
People think I am asleep.  I am not asleep; I am trapped. It’s incredibly frustrating!  Sometimes when I get really mad and want to shout ‘I can hear you,’ my heart rate monitor beeps faster.   The only part of my body that still responds to how I feel and what I think is my heart.  There is something quite poetic about that.  It is so boring here, trapped, with the beeping and the rhythmic breathing of the ventilator, and all the alarms going off.  I’ve been trying to work out how long I have been here, but I have no real reference.  I think there is a shift change every twelve hours.  I will try and remember how many handovers I have listened to about myself and divide it by two. Why not?  I’ve nothing else to do.

                                                       ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This is Sadie’s first novel. She has three children and and a rabbit. She works in healthcare. When she’s not writing or working most of her life seems to involve picking up toys and finding things she’d forgotten she has.

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

FACEBOOK- https://www.facebook.com/sadiemitchellauthor/
Twitter - @sadiedmitchell
Instagram – sadiemitchellauthor

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PUBLICATION DATE : 6th July 2018

PUBLISHER : 3p Publishing

GENRE : Domestic Drama/Thriller

PURCHASE HERE....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Silencing-Anna-disturbing-psychological-thriller-ebook/dp/B07FBN6TP9/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1537110177&sr=1-1&keywords=silencing+anna